The Rays and the Initiations - Part One - Fourteen Rules For Group
Initiation

1. Know

What is the difference
between the knowing of the aspirant and the knowledge of the initiated disciple? It is the
difference which exists between two differing fields and areas of perception. The aspirant
is told first of all to "know thyself"; he is then told to know the relation of
form and soul, and the area covered by his knowledge is that of the three worlds, plus the
level upon the mental plane on which his soul is focused. The initiated disciple knows
the relation of the periphery to the center, of the One to the many, and of unity to
diversity. The applicant is concerned with triplicity: himself as the knower, his field of
knowledge, and that which is the agent of knowing, the mind. The initiated disciple is
beyond registering triplicity and is occupied with the duality of manifestation, with
life-energy as it affects or is related to matter-force, with spirit and substance. The
knowledge of the initiate has naught to do with consciousness as the mind recognizes that
factor in the evolutionary process; his knowledge is related to the faculty of the
intuition and to that divine perception which sees all things as within itself. Perhaps
the simplest way to express the knowledge of the initiate is to say that it is direct
awareness of God, thus putting it into mystical terms; the knowledge of the aspirant is
related to that aspect of divinity which we call the soul in form. Putting this in still
another way, I might point out that the aspirant is concerned with the knowledge of soul
and matter, whilst the initiate is concerned with soul and spirit.

If I say to you, my brothers, that the knowledge of the initiate is concerned with that
which is produced by Sound and not by the AUM or the OM, I shall have linked up
these comments with much else given previously in the analysis of these fourteen rules.
The "listening" of the aspirant has now been transformed into the effectual
recognition of that which the Sound has created. I refer not here to the creation of the
phenomenal world, or to the world of meaning which is essentially the Plan or the pattern
underlying that phenomenal world, but to the intention or [289] the Purpose which
motivated the creative Sound; I am dealing with the impulsive energy which gives
significance to activity and to the life-force which the Sound centralizes at Shamballa.

It is not
the fault of humanity that it is only now possible for the significance of the divine
purpose to emerge more clearly in the consciousness of the initiated disciple. It is a
question of timing and of movement in space; it concerns the relation of the Hierarchy,
working with the Plan, to Shamballa, the recipient (by means of the Sound) of the creative
energy which it is the divine intention to expend in producing a perfect expression of the
divine Idea. It is to the knowledge of this relationship and of its effects that the first
word of Rule XIV refers.

It was the dawning of this significance upon the consciousness of the Christ - a
consciousness enlightened, purified and divinely focused - that forced Him to cry out:
"Father, not my will but Thine be done." He received a vision of the emerging
divine intention for humanity and (through humanity) for the planet as a whole. In the
hierarchical stage of development which Christ had attained and which made Him the Head of
the Hierarchy - and the Master of all the Masters, His consciousness was entirely at one
with the Plan; its application to life in the three worlds, and its goal of establishing
the Kingdom of God on earth and the emergence of the fifth kingdom in nature, were now for
Him simply the fulfiling of the law, and to that fulfilment His entire life was and had
been geared. The Plan, its goal, its techniques and methods, its laws and their
application, its phenomenal effects, the hindrances to be met, the energy (that of love)
to be employed, and the close and growing relation and interplay between the Hierarchy and
Humanity, between the heart center of the planetary Logos and the creative center, were
known to Him and fully understood. At the highest point of this consummated knowledge, and
at the moment of His complete surrender to the necessary sacrifice of His life to the
fulfiling of the Plan, suddenly a great expansion of consciousness took place. [290]

The
significance, the intention, the purpose of it all, and the extent of the divine Idea as
it existed in the mind of the "Father," dawned on His soul (not on His mind, but
on His soul). He saw still further into the significance of divinity than had ever seemed
possible; the world of meaning and the world of phenomena faded out and - esoterically
speaking - He lost His All. These are words necessarily meaningless to you. For the time
being, neither the energy of the creative mind nor the energy of love was left to Him. A
new type of energy became available - the energy of life itself, imbued with purpose and
actuated by intention. For the first time, the relation of the Will, which had hitherto
expressed itself in His life through love and the creative work of inaugurating the new
dispensation and the launching for all time of the Kingdom of God, became clear to Him. At
that point He passed through the Gethsemane of renunciation.